Impoverished and disabled people must hope for ermine-trimmed salvation. They are in line for a battery of financial blows, of quite unprecedented intensity. As the welfare reform bill grinds through the House of Lords this month, titled peers have a final chance to throw a paternalistic shield in the way of the most threatening thumps.

The plan is for welfare cuts of £18bn every year, a truly staggering sum that will hit younger families doubly hard because ministers have chosen more or less to exempt pensioners from the pain, even though they consume around half the benefits budget. The assaults come on so many fronts, it is hard to know where to start. Housing benefit changes, which are already effectively through parliament, will cleanse the poor from much of London and force many families towards the slum end of the market.

Next week, their lordships will consider disability living allowance: ministers say they can shave a fifth off the cost without explaining how, and this is a final chance to push for protections. The week after that, it's the turn of George Osborne's benefit cap, which has the bishops up in arms because it severs the fundamental link between a family's entitlement and the number of mouths to feed. Now, there are worrying signs that the cap might chiefly hit those in temporary accommodation – that is people who councils were legally bound to place in pricey bed and breakfast accommodation because they were homeless. Here the Lords must avert a legal, logistical and indeed moral mess. A few days later, they turn to the "reform" of child maintenance, which would require abandoned single parents to pay for the privilege of having the absent parent pursued.

Tomorrow alone, the Lords will deal with three critical issues, two of which concern employment and support allowance (ESA), the rebranded incapacity benefit. Even for those who pass the eye-watering stringent medical test, money will be cut off cold after a year. Only those sick people who have no spouse or a workless one will pass the means-test for continuing cash – if you are married to a full-time shelf-stacker you will be deemed not to require any income at all in your own right.

So far, controversy has centred on cancer victims, but there are all sorts of permanent and degenerative diseases that preclude people from earning a wage. They ought to be able to count on a measure of compensation. They will not be able to rely on that unless the time limit is scrapped.

Unfortunately, it won't be; despite last week's waffle from Liam Byrne about renewing the contributory principle, Labour's work and pensions spokesman is not suggesting that ESA should be paid for as long as it is needed but is merely pushing for a longer time-limit. Seeing as ESA is earned by paying national insurance there is no principle at all in that, contributory or otherwise. Tomorrow's second ESA issue concerns disabled children who enter adulthood with little prospect of working. It has been accepted that they should earn their ESA entitlement automatically. Simple decency, you may think, but decency that will go out the window unless the Lords dig in.

Last but not least are social fund crisis loans – the safety net below the safety net, to catch those who fall through the holes. It is being scrapped in favour of a grant to councils which they will be free to spend on other things. With town halls scattering redundancy notices like confetti, the cash will disappear into a black hole. It falls to their Lordships to impose a ringfence.

A century after reactionary Lords vowed to die in the ditch to stop the people's budget, let us hope that their successors prove just as dogged in protecting poor people from attack.